Sunday, February 03, 2008

Twenty Things that You Never Wanted to Know about Chemistry.

1. The cleaner the lab coat, the less the sense of humour of the wearer. (so to answer to your next question ‘Yes - CSI is full of shit’)

2. The more the piece of laboratory equipment looks like a washing machine, the more it costs. (NMR, electron microscopes, Plasma spectroscopy,..etc)

3. You "can" judge a book by its cover. The prettiness of a chemical corporation’s catalogue is directly proportional to how sinister the nature of its activities . They tend to compensate for their evil ways with publicity.For example if there is a paper manufacturing company that has a simple aerial photo of their factory on the cover of their catalogue, then you can rest assured that they are probably just what they claim to be i.e. a company that manufactures paper.However, if you see a catalogue with a photo of waterfalls, a mother holding a baby or a family having a picnic in a field of sunflowers then you can pretty much conclude that this company puts dioxins into baby food or experiments on pandas.

4. The presidents of nearly all large German chemical conglomerates look like child molesters. I’m not kidding. Check it out. It must be something to do with the blond moustaches and the devious smiles but I personally wouldn’t let one of them within half a mile of a playground.

5. Unlike architects, writers, computer programmers, engineers or librarians, chemists don’t usually have friends who are chemists outside of their workplace. Because let’s face it, who the hell wants to be friends with a friggin’ chemist. “Hey Mike, lets get together tonight for a few brewskies and chat about surface catalysts for ketone synthesis”. “Hell yeah! That’d totally raaawk.”

6. Any chemist worth his/her salt should be able to cook. The processes are almost identical even if the smells are not.

7. All chemists above 5-foot ten have a stoop.

8. A lot of high level chemists have a chip on their shoulder about the fact that quantum physics and genetics are the sexy, trendy sciences that are getting all the media attention at the moment. I’ve heard stories of photos of Craig Venter being stuck on dartboards in University staffrooms.

9. The chemistry departments of almost all universities are usually housed in the ugliest building on campus. Something resembling a high rise prefab or an inverted bunker. The obvious thinking behind this is that the college shouldn’t spend a lot of money and effort on a beautiful and expensive building when there is a fair chance that it might accidentally explode some day.

10. Surprisingly, the hardest thing to find in a large laboratory is a small glass rod to stir the shit in your beaker.